How Feedhenry has slain the business app world

Is Feedhenry the star of the southeast? Maybe. But the company that makes sense of business apps has arguably risen above the level of regional pride to become one of the hottest tech companies in the country. It makes 'cloud mobile application platforms' for big companies. In other words, organisations that can't make do with general apps available for the general public turn to Feedhenry for high-end, specialised tools to let companies develop their own solutions.

"We're beating companies like SAP and IBM," said Cathal McGloin, Feedhenry's chief executive. "It's all about mobile now. There's a huge transition from desktop to mobile underway and a lot of enterprises are not really equipped to deal with it. There are tons of new devices and services that company staff are asking to use. We have solutions for this, which is why we're now partnering with huge companies like VMWare, Rackspace, HP and others like them."

Feedhenry's intelligent bet on business-grare app platforms has seen it grow to almost 70 people across Ireland, the US and Europe.

"We have about 40 in Waterford and 15 in the US," said McGloin. "

The balance are located in the UK, with recent hires in Germany too."

Feedhenry's success has not gone unnoticed. Having raised €7m in 2013 in a funding round led by Intel Capital, the company is now being regularly spoken of as an acquisition target for global-scale firms that need to beef up their mobile technology departments. McGloin says that an eventual sale might be considered.

"We're in discussions all the time with big companies, normally with a view partnering," he said. " Technology companies are always for sale in the sense that if someone big enough comes along, you have to consider it. And that's particularly the case when you have investors such as Intel capital."

For now, the company remains in "expansion mode".

"The plan for this year is to grow and increase revenue," he said. "We just won a €2m deal six weeks ago and we're starting to see lots of those deals come along. We're solving enterprise problems here.